Heretofore, there has been known a control device capable of, in a situation where the behavior of a vehicle becomes unstable due to road wheel slip or the like, controlling the vehicle behavior to enable a safe traveling (e.g., an antiskid brake device). Specifically, there has been known a control device operable to detect the occurrence of vehicle understeer or oversteer behavior during vehicle cornering or the like, and apply an appropriate degree of deceleration to one or more road wheels so as to suppress such behavior.
There has also been known a vehicle motion control device operable to adjust a degree of deceleration during vehicle cornering to thereby adjust a load to be applied to front road wheels as steerable road wheels so as to enable a series of manipulations (braking, turning of a steering wheel, accelerating, turning-back of the steering wheel, etc.) by a driver during vehicle cornering under a normal traveling condition to be performed naturally and stably, differently from the aforementioned control for improving safety in a traveling condition causing the vehicle behavior to become unstable.
Further, there has been proposed a vehicle behavior control device operable to reduce a vehicle driving force according to a yaw rate-related quantity (e.g., yaw acceleration) corresponding to steering wheel manipulation by a driver, thereby making it possible to quickly generate vehicle deceleration in response to start of the steering wheel manipulation by the driver and thus quickly apply a sufficient load to front road wheels as steerable road wheels (see, for example, the following Patent Document 1). In this vehicle behavior control device, in response to start of the steering wheel manipulation, a load is quickly applied to the front road wheels to cause an increase in frictional force between each of the front road wheels and a road surface and thus an increase in cornering force of the front road wheels, thereby providing an improved turn-in ability of a vehicle in an initial phase after entering a curve, and an improved responsivity with respect to turning manipulation of a steering wheel (i.e., steering stability). This makes it possible to realize vehicle behavior just as intended by the driver.